Why is Yahoo Answers so popular? Especially when the quality of it appears lacking?

because its Yahoo, and its been around longer than Fluther.

Psst. You used the wrong “their”.

Yahoo Answers has been around a lot longer than this site. I used to use it and I watched the quality of questions and answers being given slide as the site gained popularity. I was just discussing this with my bf last night. I think that when a site is that popular, the quality of Q+A’s must reflect the intelligence of the general populace. I was wondering if anyone studies sites like that and this as they would seem to make interesting social indicators of the collective society. Maybe it isn’t a good representative sampling of people since there seems to be a lot of young teenagers on there. I haven’t received a good answer to a question in a long time on Yahoo so I don’t use the site as much. It will be interesting to see if Fluther takes the same route. Sites like this can only be as good as the people using it.

@Spinel – ROFL! Are your speeling eroors intentional?

(Lots of low-quality entities remain wildly popular. See: Wal*Mart, McDonalds, pop music nowadays, sweatshop -made clothing, reality TV…)

Popularity means it appeals to the lowest common denominator.
Yahoo attracts much more traffic and thus more to the Q&A section.

Don’t tell them all about fluther.
Do tell selected people about it, if you desire to do so.

We welcome new people who ask good, original questions and give thoughtful, articulate answers.

@HungryGuy No…it’s just a a little “talent” of mine. I’m very impatient…often to impatient to check my work (or spelling) and it comes back to haunt me…this question is just one such incident…

@syz Thanks for alerting me while the editing option was still available. I really apprieate it. :)

Yahoo Answers is popular simply because Yahoo gets a lot of traffic. Yahoo created Yahoo Answers to compete against early social Q&A sites like Abuzz and Answerbag. The last I checked, questions on YA expire after a week or so, so conversations on YA don’t have the continuity of sites like Fluther that create a social network of friends.

Because there has to be somewhere that all the stupid people go. We surely don’t want them here!

I was just over at Yahoo checking my emails and I drifted over to YA, suddenly I found myself in the Religion/Spiritual category, talk about no respect for anyone’s viewpoints, it’s war over in that section, and you are right it is like kindergarten, the top contributors give helpful answers but there aren’t many of them.
The questions move so quickly that by the time you answer a post it’s moved to the next page. I then posted 2 jokes in the joke category and immediately got a thumbs down (hey they weren’t that bad) I also don’t like that the questions become resolved after a few days and can longer be answered, you also can’t make another comment in the same post once you have answered it. So the bottom line is the site Sux.

Take a look at some of the people you share oxygen with and the answer should become clear. After dismissing it quickly a long time ago, my experience with Yahoo Answers is pretty much limited to seeing some of their posts on FAIL Blog like these gems: Winner #1 Winner #2 Creepy

Sadly, people like that make up a larger percentage of the population than I like to think. I wish those people were aberrations, but I deal with enough of them face-to-face that it’s apparent that they are more than a mere anomaly; *they walk among us!

@jerv There was one who thought her son had a secret girlfriend. That’s classic.

@jerv holy shit are you serious? Those questions are beyond retarded!
And yeah, Yahoo! answers is probably more popular because Yahoo! is so popular worldwide.
Just be thankful those retards aren’t here contaminating Fluther’s water…

@eLenaLicious Good point…the climate change would be awful.

@eLenaLicious I found it on the internet, so it must be true :D

@avvooooooo Classic, truly classic.

@jerv Those are giving me flashbacks.

Because it’s entertaining to see what kind of dumb shit people can come up with.

@Dr_C * Sigh. * I do believe you have discovered a new universal law, if the above evidence is any indication.

Ever heard of the famous marketing saying: “Position, position, and position”??
MY expereince of Yahoo was that it was mainly ‘kids’ and a PC site.
You couldn’t say anything of what you truly believed or felt.

Because when you ask a question on google invariably the yahoo equivalent pops up, not Fluther. Fluther occupies a microcosmic portion of cyber space, yahoo doesn’t.

I don’t actually use Y!A by asking or answering questions, but I do find it useful to browse previously asked questions, particularly ones that I wouldn’t dream of asking anywhere else. Things like ‘help me find a monologue/audition song!’ that get asked all the time.

Yeah… I guess each site has its uses and flavour to add
Some are just much better than others